The Drie Doring Diaries
Another Maskedowl/Meerkats co-written sttory. The story foolws the oldest KMP mob around, Drie Doring. From their humble begings in late 1993 to now and beyond. Humble Beginings This is where our story starts. Just three meerkats, two males and a pregnent female. F1, M1 and M2. make up the Drie Doring It's October, early spring in South Africa. F1 is expected to give birth in mid November. The researcher don't know it yet, but this mob will live on their native lands for more than 20 years. The three meerkats are a wild group which means they are not quite use to human interaction, at first they hide whenever the researchers come near them, but slowly they start the accept the presence of the researchers and this will make things easier in the years to come. The three meerkats aren't given names, instead they are numbered. The alpha female becomes VDF001, she's the first meerkat to hold this ID code and her descendants will for as long as the Drie Doring live. Her mate, the dominant male becomes VDM001. The three meerkats aren't quite all there is several more, they're given codes of VDM002, VDF002, VDM003, and VDF003, their relation is unknown, probably related to the dominant female or male. One other female appears pregnant, she might kill the dominant female's pups and the researchers witnesses the eviction of her, she's later let back in once the dominant assures she won't be a threat. A Queen Is Born November of 1993 DVF001 gives birth, for a long time how many remains a mystery, it won't be known until they come aboveground. Three weeks pass before the litter rises and it reveals to be two males and two females, the other pups are VDF004, VDM004, VDM005, and the last pup VDF005 is given the first ever name in the Drie Doring. She's called Mabili. From the get go, Mabili was born for greatness, she is brave, resillent, and also playful, these traits may one day let her lead the group when her mother passes on, but right now the little pup is far from that time and she has much to learn before she can be a queen. She must grow up a little before then. Mabili dominated playfights, but VDF004 never gave up easily. She too wanted to be queen. Mabili also competed at meal times Always getting more milk than most. When they got bigger, the pups joined the adults for foraging. Mabili stole food for some time but she quickly got the hang of finding her own meals. Even then she competed with her sister, competition now would lead to fireworks when they were adults...when their mother died. But right now Mabili and VDF004 only compete for playfighting and food, and it seems like the darker shaded female will truly shine. Pups and The New Leader Mabili's litter turned one in 1994 and the year before their mother had a unknown number of pups. With their first birthday they were no longer young, inexperienced little teenagers, they now had responsibilities to make to the well being of the Drie Doring. They had to take sentry duty and babysit the new pups. There were other changes physically. Mabili's two brothers were old enough to rove with the other males and both she and her sister were now objects of roving males' attention, the threat of eviction now plagued them as well for they were at their mother's mercy. Mabili was a good meerkat those first few years, she stayed away from rovers and was left alone by her mother. She watched as her aunts, cousins, and sisters were evicted everytime the dominant female got pregnant. She was not foolish enough...at least not yet. However in August it became clear that Mabili's innocence was gone, she was showing signs. A swollen belly, wobbly walk told the story that Mabili was now pregnant, her mother wasn't luckily but VDF004 was also pregnant as well, this could be disasterous. Mabili decided to change that, she evicted her sister. Her mother didn't see it and thus she got away with it. The young mother was going to protect her first litter ever. On September 4, Mabili gave birth to three pups, all males, the oldest pup was named Arah and the youngest was named Keros, their grandmother allowed them to stay and Mabili wasn't punished for getting pregnant. She got to raise her three babies happily and watch them grow, unaware that her time to shine was approaching. A two month group split turned Mabili's world upsidedown. She was seperated from all of her pups but Arah.